Andy Rooney Quotes

The first step in good reporting is good snooping.

Report, report, report. Dig, dig, dig. Think, think, think. Don't stop being a reporter because you've become a columnist.

People often talk about parachute journalism, but one of the skills that you get when you are a correspondent is the ability to look at facts fast and work out what the story is.

I'm a reporter by nature and training. I like things that make sense.

My best stories come from well-placed sources who point me in the right direction.

The curse of a journalist is that he always has more questions than answers.

I have gone on the air and announced my telephone number at the Washington Post. I go into the night, talking to people, looking for things. The great dreaded thing every reporter lives with is what you don't know. The source you didn't go to. The phone call you didn't return.

Find out what happened and put it in the paper

A big part of reporting is just being present. You have to show up ten days in a row to get the one telling detail.

I'm a journalist, I run to the fire, that's what we do.

In most daily journalism, you only fact-check something if it seems a little fishy.

As a journalist, the details always tell the story.

As a print journalist, you can be frustrated by people who don't call you back, parts of the story you can't get. TV gets you access to everyone because people call you back. It also allows you to satisfy your curiosity. I am a very curious person.

Journalism is literature in a hurry.

Scepticism is as important for a good journalist as it is for a good scientist.

I feel like, in some ways, I'm just a journalist.

As journalists, we keep pushing and pushing.

I think journalism is useful training for a writer in the way it takes the preciousness out of the pragmatic side of the craft.

The big moment for me was making 'All the President's Men'. It was not about Watergate or President Nixon. I wanted to focus on something I thought not many people knew about: How do journalists get the story?

You have to go where the story is to report on it. As a journalist, you're essentially running to things that other people are running away from.

If you're a journalist - and I think, on some level, I'm a journalist, and proud to be a journalist, or a documentarian, however you want to describe it - part of what I do has to be the pursuit of the truth.

All the stories in 'The UnAmericans' required interviews, travel, hours and hours in the archives. All of that stuff is so important in the beginning, but I reach a point where I have to shuck it away.

I'm a journalist and author. I make my living by finding things out and writing about them.

The meat-and-potatoes work of world journalism is performed by the wire service reporters.

What I love - and I'm a journalist - and what I love is finding hidden patterns; I love being a data detective.